Now that Bluesky has opened itself up to the public and introduced some new moderation options, the team’s decided it’s finally time to allow world leaders on board, too. A post from the official Bluesky account on Friday notified users, “By the way... we lifted our ‘no heads of state’ policy.” The policy has been in place for the last year as Bluesky worked through all the early growing pains of being a budding social network. 

Bluesky remained an invite-only platform from its launch in February 2023 until February of this year, when it finally ditched the waitlist. Bluesky had said last May that it wasn’t ready for heads of state to join, and even asked users to give its support team notice “before you invite prominent figures.” It’s since grown to more than 5 million users, gaining roughly a million alone in the day after it stopped requiring invite codes.

It’s somehow been almost 10 years since Christopher Nolan’s sci-fi odyssey Interstellar was first released in theaters, and to celebrate the upcoming anniversary, Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. are bringing it back to the big screen. Per Variety, Paramount announced at CinemaCon this week that Interstellar will be re-released on September 27, 2024 in IMAX 70mm and digital. Interstellar, starring Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain, debuted in the US in fall 2014.

In true form for Nolan, the film is a bit of a mind-bender. Interstellar presents us with a near-future Earth that is becoming uninhabitable due to an unbeatable blight that’s wiped out nearly all food crops. A team of astronauts sets out to space in search of another planet that could support life, using a wormhole to reach a galaxy beyond our own, and space-time weirdness ensues. It’s a great movie and was well-received at the time of its release (even if it left a ton of people confused about what had actually happened), going on to rake in roughly $731 million globally, according to Variety.

If you didn’t get a chance to catch it in IMAX the first time around, it’s definitely worth taking a trip to the theater for this one.

If you’ve been eyeing Sony’s WF-1000XM5 earbuds but were put off by the steep price tag, now would be the perfect time to pick up a set. The premium earbuds, normally $300, are down to a record low price of $230 on Amazon, for a savings of $70. This deal only applies to the earbuds in black. The Sony WF-1000XM5 earbuds were released in summer 2023 and brought major upgrades over the previous model. They boast the best noise cancellation and call quality of Sony’s earbuds lineup, and have built-in Alexa support.

The Sony WF-1000XM5 earbuds are our top pick for the best earbuds for this year. They’re more comfortable than the WF-1000XM4s, being 25 percent smaller and 20 percent lighter for a much better fit. The charging case, too, is more compact than its predecessor. In terms of sound quality, they further improve upon the already impressive capabilities of the 1000X line. The speakers are slightly larger than the previous model’s, and their Dynamic Driver X drivers make for rich, clear sound and bassier bass. Sony WF-1000XM5 scored an 87 in our review last year.

The earbuds offer Adaptive Sound Control, which will automatically adjust your noise cancellation settings to work best for the environment you’re in or activity you’re doing. You may want active noise cancellation on when you’re working from home, but switch to transparency mode when you’re going out for a run. You’ll need to enable location services for this feature using Sony’s Headphones Connect app.

The app allows for other types of customization as well, like changing the controls assigned to the touch sensors on the earbuds. Sony’s WF-1000XM5 earbuds also support multipoint Bluetooth connections, which means you can pair them with two devices at the same time. There’s a Speak-to-Chat mode that pauses audio when it senses you’ve started a conversation, and an equalizer in the app where you can adjust your sound settings.

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xAI, the OpenAI competitor founded by Elon Musk, has introduced the first version of Grok that can process visual information. Grok-1.5V is the company's first-generation multimodal AI model, which cannot only process text, but also "documents, diagrams, charts, screenshots and photographs." In xAI's announcement, it gave a few samples of how its capabilities can be used in the real world. You can, for instance, show it a photo of a flow chart and ask Grok to translate it into Python code, get it to write a story based on a drawing and even have it explain a meme you can't understand. Hey, not everyone can keep up with everything the internet spits out. 

The new version comes just a couple of weeks after the company unveiled Grok-1.5. That model was designed to be better at coding and math than its predecessor, as well as to be able to process longer contexts so that it can check data from more sources to better understand certain inquiries. xAI said its early testers and existing users will soon be able to enjoy Grok-1.5V's capabilities, though it didn't give an exact timeline for its rollout. 

In addition to introducing Grok-1.5V, the company has also released a benchmark dataset it's calling RealWorldQA. You can use any of RealWorldQA's 700 images to evaluate AI models: Each item comes with questions and answers you can easily verify, but which may stump multimodal models like Grok. xAI claimed its technology received the highest score when the company tested it with RealWorldQA against competitors, such as OpenAI's GPT-4V and Google Gemini Pro 1.5.

Microsoft is exploring the idea of putting ads in your Windows 11 Start menu. To be specific, it's looking to place advertisements for apps you can find in the Microsoft Store in the menu's recommended section. I could hear you sighing in defeat if you've used Windows 10 extensively before — the older OS serves ads in the Start menu, as well, and they're also for apps you can download. At the moment, Microsoft will only show ads in this version if you're in the US and a Windows Insider in the Beta Channel. You won't be seeing them if you're not a beta tester or if you're using a device managed by an organization.

Further, you can disable the advertisements altogether. To do so, just go to Personalization under Settings and then toggle off "Show recommendations for tips, app promotions, and more" in the Start section. Like any other Microsoft experiment, it may never reach wider rollout, but you may want to remember the aforementioned steps, since the company does have history of incorporating ads into its desktop platforms. Last year, Microsoft also deployed experimental promo spots for its services like OneDrive in the menu that pops up when you click on your profile photo. 

Microsoft

On Friday, people around the web noticed a new addition to their Instagram: Meta AI, the company’s general-purpose, AI-powered chatbot that can answer questions, write poetry and generate images with a simple text prompt. The move isn’t surprising. Meta revealed Meta AI in September 2023 and has spent the last few months adding the chatbot to products like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, so adding it to Instagram seems like a no-brainer. 

“Our generative AI-powered experiences are under development in various phases, and we’re testing a range of them publicly in a limited capacity,” a Meta spokesperson told Engadget, which suggests that not everyone has the feature available yet. TechCrunch, which first noted the news, said that Meta AI was showing up in Instagram’s search bar. But for some of us at Engadget, the feature actually showed up in the search bar in Instagram’s Direct Messaging inbox. 

Tapping it let me start a conversation with Meta AI just I would DM a friend on Instagram. I was able to ask the chatbot to give me definitions of words, suggest headlines for some stories I’m working on, and generate images of dogs on skateboards. I was also able to ask Meta AI to recommend Reels with cats in them, which it was able to do easily.

But when my colleague Aaron Souppouris asked Meta AI in WhatsApp to recommend Reels, it showed him some Reels in that app too — suggesting that the bot in Instagram isn’t really doing anything specific to Instagram. Instead, Meta is simply shoehorning the same chatbot into every app it owns.

If you tap a hamburger menu within the bot, Meta AI will also show you a long list of possible actions you ask the bot to take.

Aaron Souppouris

Why would you want a chatbot in Instagram to suggest tips for dealing with credit card debit, have a debate about cardio versus weights, or suggest hacks to travel with points, I do not know. But the point is that if you want to, you can.

The price of a monthly subscription to Tesla's (kind-of) self-driving software has just been cut in half. Tesla's Full Self Driving (Supervised) subscription now costs $99 per month, a reduction from the previous standard of $199. 

Tesla instituted the $199 monthly upgrade fee in 2021, back when its self-driving system was still in beta. It costs $12,000 to add Full Self Driving (Supervised) — full name, every time — to a Tesla outright, so at the current rate, it'll take 10 years for the subscription to lose its value. As far as installment plans go, this one seems like a solid deal. To be fair, so was the $199 rate, which gave (self-)drivers five years before hitting $12,000 in fees.

Tesla is doing what it can to make its EVs (and its stock) more attractive following a rough financial quarter to kick off 2024. For the first time since 2020, Tesla EV shipments fell year-over-year and they dipped significantly compared with the previous quarter. In the first months of 2024, Tesla deliveries were down eight percent yearly and down 20 percent over the final quarter of 2023. Analysts expected Tesla to ship 449,080 EVs in Q1 2024, but it delivered just 386,810.

The company offered a free trial of Full Self Driving (Supervised), which does not make the vehicle autonomous, to Tesla drivers at the end of 2023, seemingly in an attempt to boost its bottom line before reporting came due. As of March 2024, Tesla salespeople in North America are required to demonstrate Full Self Driving (Supervised) to anyone buying a vehicle. The prices of all Model Y vehicles also rose by $1,000 on April 1.

Tesla hasn't shared shipment numbers for the Cybertruck, which started rolling out late last year. The company is preparing to release a "next-generation low-cost" EV in 2025. Probably.

As Threads has grown to more than 130 million users, one of the major remaining “missing” features users often complain about is the lack of direct messaging abilities. But those missing out on DMs may soon have a new option to message other Threads users.

Meta is starting to test messaging features that rely on Instagram’s inbox but allow new messages to be initiated from the Threads app. The feature has begun to appear for some Threads users, who report seeing a “message” button atop other users’ profiles where the “mention” feature used to be. A Meta spokesperson confirmed the change, saying the company was “testing the ability to send a message from Threads to Instagram.”

Of note, Threads still doesn’t have its own inbox, and it’s not clear if it ever will. Instagram head Adam Mosseri has said multiple times that he doesn’t want to create a separate inbox for Threads, but would rather “make the Instagram inbox work” in the app. A Meta spokesperson further confirmed that “this is not a test of DMs on Threads.”

But even though it’s not a full-fledged DM feature, the ability to send a message from the Threads app without having to switch to Instagram could at least make messaging from Threads a little less clunky. Actually checking or replying to those messages, though, will still require users to head to the Instagram app.

That may still seem like an entirely unnecessary step, but Mosseri has pointed out that building two versions of the same inbox could easily get complicated. “If, in the end, we can’t make the Instagram inbox work for Threads, we’ll have a hard choice to make between (1) mirroring the Instagram inbox in Threads and dealing with notification routing weirdness, and (2) building a totally separate Threads inbox and dealing with the fact that you’ll have two redundant message threads with each of your friends with the same handles in two different apps,” he wrote in a post in November. “Neither seems great.”

Back in December, Epic Games won an antitrust case against Google. A jury found that Google held an illegal monopoly on in-app billing and app distribution on Android devices, and that it engaged in anticompetitive practices with certain gaming companies and device manufacturers.

At the time, it was unclear what Epic actually won as the remedies had not been determined. The Fortnite maker has now submitted a proposed permanent injunction against Google detailing what it wants. In short, Epic wants the Play Store to be almost wide open.

The injunction is based on three core points. Epic noted in a blog post. First, Epic believes that Google has to let users download apps from wherever they want without it getting in the way. It says people should be able to add apps to Android devices in much the same way they can from a computer — from any app store or the web.

Epic wants to block Google from scaring people off from downloading apps from the web (though it's okay with letting Google block malware). It also wants to stop the company from working with carriers and phone manufacturers to limit the options consumers have for downloading apps. Among other things, Epic wants restrictions on pre-installed app stores to be outlawed. So, if the injunction is approved, we might see Android phones pre-installed with a Epic Games Store app in the future.

Second, Epic argues that Google has to allow developers and users the freedom to choose how they offer and pay for in-app purchases, "free from anticompetitive fees and restrictions." It asserts that Google has to let developers include links from their apps to websites, where they might be able to make offer discounts as they'd bypass Google's cut of in-app payments facilitated through the Play Store.

Epic kicked off its legal battle with Google (and Apple) in 2020 by pointing out to Fortnite mobile players that they could save money by buying the V-bucks currency directly from Epic. Under the proposed injunction, Google would be prevented from trying to prevent alternative payment options through compliance programs like User Choice Billing.

The third aim of Epic's proposed injunction is to block Google from retaliating against it (or any app or developer) for taking on app store practices. "Google has a history of malicious compliance and has attempted to circumvent legislation and regulation meant to reign in their anti-competitive control over Android devices," Epic wrote. "Our proposed injunction seeks to block Google from repeating past bad-faith tactics and open up Android devices to competition and choice for all developers and consumers."

The injunction has more details about Epic's demands, including for Google to untangle its products and services (such as Android APIs) from the Play Store. For a period of six years, Epic wants Google to allow third-party app stores onto the Play Store without fees, and for them to have access to the Play Store's library of apps. That would also mean allowing the third-party app stores to handle updates for Play Store apps. Epic wants Google to appoint a compliance committee to ensure it's abiding by the injunction too.

We may not have to wait too long to find out just how many of Epic's requests the court rubberstamps. Google will respond to the proposal by May 2 and a hearing on the injunction is set for May 23.

Google is having to make many similar changes in the European Union due to the bloc's Digital Markets Act. However, parent company Alphabet and Apple are already under investigation over concerns that they're not freely allowing developers to bypass the Play Store and App Store.

Meanwhile, as a result of the DMA, Epic plans to release a mobile app store on iOS and Android in the EU later this year. It's also still battling Apple over third-party payments in the US.

Possibility Space, an independent game studio with employees distributed across the globe, was abruptly shut down today by its CEO Jeff Strain, former employees revealed on Twitter. The studio launched in 2021 with the goal of creating a AAA title, and it had also hired industry notables like Waypoint's Austin Walker and Ubisoft designer Liz England. Its closure follows the shutdown of Crop Circle Games last month, another studio owned by Strain's Prytania Media, which he co-founded with his wife Annie Delisi Strain.

In an e-mail obtained by Polygon report Nicole Carpenter, Strain said he was "stunned" to learn that confidential information about the studio's major title, code-named Project Vonnegut, was shared with Kotaku reporter Ethan Gach. Strain claims that an unnamed publishing "expressed low confidence" about funding the studio any further, which led to a mutual agreement to cancel the title. Subsequently, he decided to shut down the studio entirely.

Possibility Space isn't the first studio to have game details leaked to press, and it's unclear why that information was damning enough to lose publisher funding (and don't forget, this is only Strain's version of events). 

Last month, Annie Delisi Strain also issued a similarly baffling e-mail (via IGN) where she blamed Crop Circle Game's closure on economic downturn, but additionally revealed that she was diagnosed with multiple-sclerosis. She claimed, without evidence, that Kotaku's Gach could potentially publish her health details without consulting her: "I stepped down as CEO this winter on a medical leave and while I don't know the content of Mr. Gach's article, I have no assurances that my personal health struggles as a rare female game industry CEO will not be covered in his article."